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largest of the pieces now before you. I condescended
to pick it up, and to my astonishment found that it
was a thin scale of what appears to be pure gold.’
He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces,
which on examination convinced him that his suppositions
were right. His first impression was, that this
gold had been lost or buried there by some early Indian
tribe—­perhaps some of those mysterious inhabitants
of the west, of whom we have no account, but who dwelt
on this continent centuries ago, and built those cities
and temples, the ruins of which are scattered about
these solitary wilds. On proceeding, however,
to examine the neighbouring soil, he discovered that
it was more or less auriferous. This at once
decided him. He mounted his horse, and rode down
to me as fast as it would carry him with the news.

“At the conclusion of Mr. Marshall’s account,”
continued Captain Sutter, “and when I had convinced
myself, from the specimens he had brought with him,
that it was not exaggerated, I felt as much excited
as himself. I eagerly inquired if he had shown
the gold to the work-people at the mill, and was glad
to hear that he had not spoken to a single person
about it. We agreed,” said the Captain,
smiling, “not to mention the circumstance to
any one, and arranged to set off early the next day
for the mill. On our arrival, just before sundown,
we poked the sand about in various places, and before
long succeeded in collecting between us more than
an ounce of gold, mixed up with a good deal of sand.
I stayed at Mr. Marshall’s that night, and the
next day we proceeded some little distance up the
South Fork, and found that gold existed along the
whole course, not only in the bed of the main stream,
where the water had subsided, but in every little dried-up
creek and ravine. Indeed I think it is more plentiful
in these latter places, for I myself, with nothing
more than a small knife, picked out from a dry gorge,
a little way up the mountain, a solid lump of gold
which weighed nearly an ounce and a half.

“On our return to the mill, we were astonished
by the work-people coming up to us in a body, and
showing us small flakes of gold similar to those we
had ourselves procured. Marshall tried to laugh
the matter off with them, and to persuade them that
what they had found was only some shining mineral
of trifling value; but one of the Indians, who had
worked at the gold mine in the neighbourhood of La
Paz, in Lower California, cried out, ‘Oro! oro!’
We were disappointed enough at this discovery, and
supposed that the work-people had been watching our
movements, although we thought we had taken every precaution
against being observed by them. I heard afterwards,
that one of them, a sly Kentuckian, had dogged us
about, and that, looking on the ground to see if he
could discover what we were in search of, he had lighted
on some flakes of gold himself.